Council - Special Meeting

Good evening everyone. Welcome to our special call council meeting tonight. We uh on February the 23rd, 2026 at 7:00 p.m. call this meeting to order. And I would like to ask Mr. Reverend Tommy Knox to come up and give our invocation.

Let us pray. We thank you, Father God, for this opportunity to come together as members of a great town of Batesburg, Leville. Lord, we just thank you for our town. We thank you for those who help to govern it. We thank you for the order we have. We thank you for the community we have here, Lord. We just pray that we conduct this meeting tonight for the best interest of our town, and we do everything according to your word as is unto the Lord. May you be glorified and honored in this meeting tonight. We give you thanks and praise in Jesus name. Amen. Amen.

Thank you, Tommy. Uh at this time, I'd like to get everyone to stand if you can and do the pledge of allegiance led by Bo Turner. I aliance to the flag of the United States of America and to the republic for which it stands. One nation under God, indivisible, with liberty and justice for all. All right. At this time, I'll entertain a motion to approve the agenda. Some

move. Second. Second. Paul and Paul. We have a motion and a second that we uh approve the agenda for the tonight's meeting. It's now open for discussion. There's no discussion. We'll vote. District one. District one votes yes. District four.

She's not. District five. Yes. District six. Yes. District eight. District eight votes yes. And the mayor votes yes. The agenda is approved. All right. Move send new business. Uh, I would like to entertain a motion to accept the results of the February 17th special election. Salute. We have a motion. We have a second.

Second. We have a motion and a second that we accept the results of the February 17th, 2026 a special election. Those results are officially Bazburg Leville Town Council District 2. Todd and Tonovvic got 11 votes 12.22% 22% and Chips Bradley got 77 votes which is 85.56% of the votes. Congratulations Chip. Is there any discussion? If not, we'll vote. District one. Yes. District five. Yes.

District six. Yes. District eight. District eight vote yes.

And the mayor vote yes. That motion carries. At this time, I would like to call on Municipal Court Judge Michael Emmer to come forward and swear in Councilman Bradley. I do solemnly swear I do solemnly swear

that I am duly qualified I am duly qualified according to the constitution of this state according to the constitution of this state to exercise the duties of the office to which I have been elected to exercise the duties of the office to elected and that I will to the best of my ability and I will to the best of my ability discharge the duties thereof discharge duties thereof and preserve protect and defend and preserve protect and defend the Constitution of this state and of the United Constitution of this state and of the United States. As council member of the town of Fatesburg, Gville, as council member of the town of Fatesburg, Gville, I will equally, fairly, and impartially I will equally, fairly, and impartially, to the best of my ability and skill.

to the best of my ability and skill. Exercise the trust proposed in me. exercise the trust proposed in me. And I will use my best endeavors I will use my best endeavors to preserve the peace to preserve the peace and carry into effect to according to law according to law the purpose for which I have been elected the purpose for which I've been elected

I so affirm congratulations Thanks. Congratulations, Councilman Spradley. Thank you. Glad to have you up here with us. Glad to be here. All right. This conducts all the meet business that we have in this special meeting. At this point in time, I'd like to call for a motion to adjourn.

So move. Second. We have a motion and a second to adjurnn. The motion to adjurnn is a special privilege motion and it is not discussed. We'll go directly to vote. District one, yes. District two, yes. District five, yes. District six, yes. District eight, district eight, vote yes.

And the mayor vote chest. We are adjourned. Okay. And so we'll take about five minutes to get tables and chairs set up. Okay. And then we'll get started.

At this time, I'll call our work session to order. Uh we have down on on the agenda, approval of the agenda. But since we don't vote in work sessions, we are going to go ahead and accept the agenda as written. without that. And new business is on here. Presentation of the compensation classification study by Marian Oyas. Oyas. Y Oas of the Archer Company. Welcome.

Thank you. Thank you for having me here. Um I am Maryanne Oyas. I'm down here from Raleigh, North Carolina. However, you may notice that my accent is not quite Carolina's. No, no. I'm from Minnesota um and spent a lot of my adult life in Wisconsin, but I was brought down to the south by my husband and his family and I would I would never go back. Although I wasn't able to come here the last two times because of snow, so I might as well have moved back to Wisconsin. Um we have been working on a compensation classification study for the better part of a year. uh along with uh Jay Hendris and Cricut and uh the former police chief AIC uh was also very involved uh the department heads and so this evening I'm going to walk kind of quickly through a highle summary. My understanding is you have the full report and an executive summary. So I'm going to hit the highlights and and then any questions you have or concerns I would love to hear them. I've been doing this work for about 34 years. uh starting in Wisconsin in the upper Midwest and then down I've been working in the Carolas, Georgia uh and down to Florida for about the last 15 years. Uh local government pay is my love. I've been working on it really my whole career. So I just want to briefly talk about what we were asked to do, how we did it, our methodology. I want to focus on what's called internal equity and market equity which are the two components of a fair pay plan and then the new pay structure uh and and ways to implement a new pay structure for a town like Batesburg Leville compensation policy review I'll just touch upon at a high level there's a lot

of detail about compensation policies in our report and then just briefly some recommendations to keep the plan current. So to move from a situation where you haven't really had a formal pay plan to a situation where you have a formal pay plan is kind of a big deal. It's not difficult to keep it going in the future. A lot of the work was done to get us to this point, but we would hate to see us leave walk out the door and that the plan wouldn't be maintained over time. So I always like to kind of talk about that at the last minute. Really our objectives here were to take a look at every single job in the town. So employees completed uh pretty thorough questionnaires about their jobs. I came back and interviewed all the department heads and some of the other managers. We also completed a really big pay study of a number of your peer organizations which we'll talk about in a minute. Once that all was done, then we came together and put uh put a proposed pay structure together and then did some costing of potential scenarios to implement it. The process we use is tried and true. So, our company has been doing this work since about 1987. And we've done this kind of study in over now 1,700 towns, cities, counties, state governments, utility districts, and we've got a good track record of councils adopting the studies. I think because we've been doing it so long, we've made every mistake once at least, and over the years have kind of come up with the process that's pretty realistic and fair. When I talk about job analysis and evaluation, like I said, we really looked in depth at every single position at the town, all the departments, you know, all the functions that people provide that are so critical to the

citizens of your town in the local area. I did talk to each one of the department heads about their any pay concerns they had like any jobs they couldn't keep filled or jobs where folks were leaving in high numbers that sort of thing. We did uh something called job evaluation which is basically every job is scored um scored on a number of criteria that really get at the difficulty of the job the requirements the skills and I'll talk a little bit more about that in a minute. From that we've come back with a set of paygrade recommendations. So every job is being put into a paygrade and that's the a fundamental component of a actual pay plan. So the different factors we look at are everything from you know dealing with people. I mean some jobs the dealings with people's pretty easy. There are some jobs many of them in this room where the dealings with people is complicated and it's risky. We look at physical requirements lifting pushing pulling climbing and balancing. We look at the environment in which the work is done. What are the risks? um is it you know hazards in the environment, weapons, all sorts of risks that town employees encounter in different departments. We look at uh management responsibilities. So jobs that are responsible for a budget or for people or for planning part of the town's uh comprehensive plan, anything like that. So the way the jobs are measured is the same yard stick if you will in all jobs and the jobs can be very different from each other but we found a common way to be able to measure them and rank them from kind of the easiest job to the most difficult job and everything in between. That's what job evaluation is. the po the point factor system that we

use. Then what happens is jobs that are kind of similar in terms of total points are put into a pay grade. So you may have jobs in a paygrade that are very different from each other in different departments doing different things, but when you look at the scores on all those factors, the scores are pretty similar. So all town jobs were placed into a 21 pay grade structure from entry level up through all the department heads. And so the idea is that all the jobs now have a pay range and that employees will understand what their pay grade is and their range. And over time that should help you get good people and keep good people because employees these days are expecting there to be a pay structure. And so this is a this will help kind of modernize you and prepare you for the future. In the market assessment um you know what we do is we go out and we select with the project team what organizations are your market. So what does that mean? So where do you hire people from? Where are you losing people to? That's the market. And so once that and I'll show you what those organizations were in just a second. Um we surveyed almost every single town job um amongst you know the pay levels paid by those peers and then we asked other towns and cities in your peer group what kinds of pay policies did they have like when they hire someone what's the policy for setting the hiring pay and the promotional pay and all those kinds of things. So that was the survey. We had almost 100% response rates from the different organizations. And so the idea is that when we come we know what job what grades the jobs were going to be in that was decided by job evaluation. But then the question is well what should the pay range be and that that is u achieved through the market analysis.

So when you look at the peers that were chosen uh by the project team with some input from the department heads there's quite a variety. You've got communities in the area, you've got some counties in the area, and a number of law enforcement organizations, highway patrol, sled, that kind of thing. So, the so of course the the um law enforcement comparable organizations were primarily for police jobs, but the other organizations, we brought in data for from as many of your jobs that we could match, you know, that existed in those organizations. We also did look at private sector pay rates. So a number of your jobs, you know, they exist in your private industry. Uh equipment operators, accountants, planners, you know, all sorts of jobs exist in private industry. So we look not just at public sector organizations, but what what are the pay rates in the kind of the greater Bates Batesburg Leville area. What we do when we go to the organizations is we ask for pay ranges. So we don't ask the you know the peers what do you pay your pay uh your police chief or your equipment operator what's their hourly rate but you we ask for the ranges so the idea is that we use that data to give you ranges pay ranges which will be competitive with these other organizations and I want to say it before I say anything else when I talk about competitive pay ranges the ranges we're recommending are competitive with those peers but they're not um higher, right? So, we didn't bring back ranges that are going to make you a pay leader in this area of South Carolina, but the ranges will be on par with the organizations that I just showed you, kind of the average, if you will. And that's a good place to be, especially

when you don't have a pay plan now. So, it's it's kind of like we have to start somewhere, right? So the ranges we're recommending will be competitive but they're not excessively high. So just something to keep in mind. Uh one one of the findings that we found which was initially discouraging is that your pay ranges are as it says in red really what we would say critically low among those market organizations. You know averaging about 30% below market. That's certainly not a great place to be, but it's where you are and there's no judgment here. That's just where you are. So, you know, we got a lot of information about most of the town jobs and found many of them are are paid right now kind of low, you know, among those peers. But then we just move forward and we take that information and we bring you back ranges which will get you into as I said a competitive kind of at average position among those communities and organizations. We did hear from the police chief at the time and other department heads, town manager that you the town is having some trouble hiring some jobs and keeping some jobs. I don't think that's all pay. If you've got a lot of people leaving in my experience of almost 38 years in human resources, it's generally not just pay. That's all I'm going to say about that. But clearly, you know, the data shows that pay is probably a factor. So, we took that information. We said that's where the town is at and we will give recommendations to help fix the pay issues. So, that was our goal. If you look at at this table kind of by community across all the different jobs that we surveyed, you see a lot of negative numbers and the and these are basically saying that your pay rates

are, you know, 10, 20, 30 or even more percent below the pay rates um in these different organizations. But again, that's where you're at. It's certainly not what we're recommending. And we did an analysis like this of all uh 48 or so jobs that we surveyed. This is just an example of the data for police officer from the again from the different communities and organizations that we surveyed. There's another table here for street labor. Some of the jobs at the town are being paid a little closer to market, but in general we did the finding was that uh pay here at this point was pretty low. And so what we gave you was a roadmap to to bring uh pay up. So you know the idea in the pay range you know we're recommending a range as you saw in the report with pay steps is that kind of those minimum rates step one should be competitive for you to hire people at in most cases. There still may be cases where if you hire uh somebody that has a whole lot of experience in whatever you're hiring them for, you may want to pay them higher than that minimum step. But those minimums now are going to are going to be competitive. You're going to find good people when you're looking to re to fill jobs. And then the ranges themselves, the steps along the way allow you to say to the employees, you're being paid competitively now and you will be for a number of years. As long as you do your job and you contribute to the town, we're willing to invest in you through a structure of of reasonable pay steps um every year for a number of years. So that's the idea behind a step plan such as what we've recommended there. We you know we looked at pay practices and and just a couple of what you might call benefit programs and and

some of our major findings were um you know most of your peers look at performance of employee performance when they make paid decisions and I've been told that that you do as well. So performance is important here and about half of the peers uh do have a referral bonus program and so do you and that's a program where as an employee if you refer a new employee to the town and they're hired and they they do a good job you're paid a little bit of a a payment for you know helping the town find good people and that's a good practice. It's it really pays itself off in in a short amount of time. Uh in terms of below market offerings, you know, the big one was was your rates are are are pretty low right now. Um the cost of living increase. We took a look at what you gave for cost of living for the last two years. And here it totaled 6% over the two years compared to 7% among the peers. It's only a percent difference, but in the world of pay actually that's that's not insignificant. So, um, we every year, uh, once you're a client of ours, will give you information like this from the market on what your peers are doing for pay increases and are they moving their pay structures up and how much. So, um, we are happy to give you that information in the late summer or whenever you need it to help you keep your pay ranges competitive in the future. So once the salary survey work was done with all those competitors, the jobs were scored, then we we started to recommend a pay structure and and really what this is saying and what this graph is saying is that if you look at our job evaluation scores, how we scored the jobs and then you look at the pay of the jobs in the market, they relate really well. So we can use our scoring system and the market data to develop pay ranges that we know are going to be

internally fair. Meaning the more difficult the job is, the higher the pay it w will be, but also uh pay that is uh going to allow you to hire and keep good people in this market um of this part of South Carolina. the you know the pay structure as I said uh each of the jobs is put into a pay grade and each paygrade has a range of pay and that range is divided into a number of pay steps. The idea is that employees typically come in at at the bottom unless they're really experienced and they move up kind of a step a year if your funds permit. If there are times where you don't have the funds to allow steps to move up, that's always your call. And then typically our employers that have step plans also consider a cost of living increase. Uh they consider it every year. Some years they give one, some years they don't. And in a step plan, when when you do a cost of living increase, the steps go up too. So, in a step plan, there's sometimes an opportunity for employees to receive a cost of living increase on a step increase until they hit that top step. But every year, those are decisions that that you make under whatever your policies are for deciding pay increases. None of that really changes. So, I think, you know, but what I just said basically is is captured up there. Each pay grade now is is divided into 20 pay steps. U the pay steps, you know, average around uh 2 and a half% from step to step. And if you get your calculator out and you look at them, you'll see that the pay steps get a little bit smaller once people hit kind of that middle value of the range, which is called the market reference point.

you know, in all these pay range words I'm using, minimum, market reference point, maximum pay steps, none of what we're recommending is um unusual. In fact, it's real typical public sector pay structure um practices. So, we're not doing anything, you know, avant guard or weird or, you know, from Wisconsin or anything. This is typical things that would be done in the public sector in the southeast, actually across the country. So, you can't really see the numbers, but they're there. And so, this is what a pay structure looks like. As I said, there's a number of paygrades. Each of the paygrades has a range. Each of the range is divided into 20 steps. People come in when they're hired, generally at the bottom, and they kind of move up a step a year. And that's predictable. The folks that are doing your budget will know every year who's getting a step and what their next step is going to be. And so they can give you as a council really good information on budget expenditures that you can expect for payroll for the next year. Very predictable. I I you know pretty much mentioned this that in a in a pay uh a step structure you have to think in terms of from the employer perspective about um cost of living increase and step increases and then kind of use your budget to decide what you can do. We're there company's there. I'm going to be there to help you kind of the first couple years you do this uh in any way I can. But then these plans sort of have they just become part of the workings of the town and again very predictable from a budget standpoint. Kind of the last big thing in a pay structure is uh implementation is well what do you do with the town employees? You have to give get them onto the new structure. So, we know that

we know everybody's pay grade and so we know the range they're going into, but implementation means, you know, bringing folks their current salaries onto this their new pay grade and range. So, there's a couple ways that you can do it. One is we identified uh about 37 of the employees whose pay is below a minimum. it's it's below, you know, the lowest pay rate we would recommend for the job. And those are the biggest kind of inequity we would say or unfairness. And from a from a standpoint of um keeping employees, you know, here and satisfied once you've identified the jobs that are paid that low, you've identified them and so then the employees know it. So we always say if you can afford it, try to get those 37 people onto their new pay ranges e even at the range minimum and then they you know can move up a step a year. So that's that's option one. In option two, uh we take the the pay of the employees in their new range and we bring them on a step whatever step is closest to their current salary. So it's uh if their their salary right now is between step two and three, they move to step three. If their salary right now is between step eight and nine, they move to step nine. So it's just, you know, bringing people onto their new ranges at the step closest to their current salary. The third option is is more costly and it's called a compression reduction option. And what it does is it says we're going to calculate and we did for each employee how long they've been in their job. And the longer they've been in the job, the we place them a little bit higher into the new range for each year they've been in the job. And that way

you are giving credit, if you will, to the service of the employee in the job. and folks that have been here longer would be placed higher into the pay range than people that have sort of just started or started a year or two ago. That's the third option. And um I'm just going to go up to this chart and this is in the report too. So you can see for um in the chart in the left side there are categories of how long people have been in their job. So if they've been in their job less than a year, we would say bring them just to step one. If they've been in their job one to two almost two years, you bring them to step two. They've been in their job two to three years, you bring them to step three, and so so on. Nobody would be placed higher than step eight, which is kind of that market reference point in this implementation just because of the cost. And it still is. It's quite an investment. So in the report you know all these numbers are uh you know in the report and the executive summary but you can see that each of the options scenario one two and three has a investment or cost associated with it and that's the cost to get folks onto the plan. uh once the the plan is implemented then people move through the step plan like I said kind of a step a year and cost of living increases in the years where you can afford to do both and that doesn't have to be every year so these are not insignificant costs and you know I do this kind of for a living so I see a lot of these numbers and I know this is a lot of money for a town in a budget your size and I just want to acknowledge that it's not my money to spend you know certainly these there are decisions that you have to make. Um, increasingly our our client organizations like you are saying we want to do this but we can't do it at once. And so it's not uncommon that an

implementation is phased over a couple years or in some cases three years. I think if you go more than three years it gets awfully complicated. But if if this is something that you feel you can support and money just isn't there to do it at once, just wanted to throw that out that an implementation over a couple or even three years is not uncommon in in these days. In terms of pay policy recommendations, I I'll just say that once once you have a pay plan, then you have you have to think about, well, okay, so you know, how do we decide how much to pay a new person? Or if we're going to promote Jack from uh an equipment operator, one to a lead equipment operator, how much should the raise be? And these are pay policies and they're important in a pay plan so that it's administered fairly across the departments and there there's favoritism in some departments. So, we have made recommendations that if they're adop adopted as we've recommended them or with whatever changes you think are appropriate will just help keep the plan current and uh kind of headache-free in the future. Again, we're not recommending anything that's unusual in terms of public sector pay practice. And so, you know, in the future, it's a good idea to do a a plan review like this about every four years or five at the most. And then the in between years just you know keeping up with information about what those peers are doing with their pay increases and their structures so that you can make a decision um about if you want to continue to be competitive once you are going to be competitive with these ranges then uh it's it's a fairly simple process to do it uh just by small increments you know year upon year and then a major study every four to five years. That's really the presentation. Um, what questions or concerns do you have?

I noticed that there are no private sector entities being considered and for a percentage of our doves. The competition is for the private sector here. Yeah. And I I didn't want to there actually were so the economic research institute data is private sector data for the local areas. Yes. Yeah. So, you went local on some jobs, uh, county on some jobs, statewide on some, and I wouldn't feel we compete nationally on some jobs. Uh, yeah. I didn't get any feedback that you were hiring nationally. It was local.

I come from industry and we did compete. Sure. Internationally. Oh, okay. That basis. Oh, that's real different. Yeah. Through a few of these. Yeah. My other question is, of course, you have 20 steps and obviously it looks like that's a 20-year plan. How do you justify paying an employee who has been here 15 years doing the same job as one who's been here 13 years? How does three years add value to that person's ability to perform that job?

That's that that's a good question. I think, you know, I if if you're doing and you are apparently doing performance evaluations, that's what I've been told. I wasn't asked to really look at it, but if you are and and you're kind of certifying that every year folks are doing what's expected and they're learning and growing, I think that's the justification. But the other thing to keep in mind is that those peers we looked at are giving increases for a number of years. So part of the reason we recommended the plan we did was to keep you competitive over a number of years. The third and last thing I'd say is, you know, once somebody's been here 8 n 10 years, you've invested a lot of money in them and they've invested a lot of time in you. And those departures, assuming folks are performing competently, those departures are hard. And so the plan is meant to retain good quality performers that have invested in you over a number of years. They shouldn't get beyond step one, two, and three if they're not doing their job. You know, that's

I concur. Yeah. So you have no insurance. You also mentioned um that our turnover may or may not be or could be directly related to salaries but uh you know I guess did you consider or could comment on Roseber's theory of two that there are two levels or two different causes for satisfaction and dissatisfaction and is was that considered when you looked at or dogs or

I'm smiling only because u when I went back to school for master's degree in human resources, my thesis was on Herzburg's theory. Um and I wrote it in 1987 and I can still kind of remember the theory. Um no, we we we didn't say let's apply Herzburg's theory. Uh but what what what my comment was that you know I'm a pay professional and I've heard my whole career people say when folks are leaving it's pay and in my experience it's sometimes pay but often there are other factors culture management style uh benefits so even though I'm a pay person and I think pay is important I think to be intellectually honest I I I would say if you are having turnover in an area look more broadly than just pay.

Okay. Your cost study for implementation is that direct salary or is that total cost that the program will impose? No, it is just base payroll. So you'd have to factor in whatever the benefit uh addition is. So we're not including 18% for retirement. We're not including FICO. We're not including any other factors in these numbers. No. And we were clear about that in the report. We could certainly add them in. And you're, you know,

if you're talking a half a million, we're actually talking 3/4 of a million uh in in terms of implementing the program. The last one is uh how can council be um satisfied that this job eval that the jobs are being set up and their job descriptions will meet the policies set by this council. And that is the overall objective is what do we want for the future of the community and how will this structure uh enable us to implement our policies. Council was never uh actually unless I'm confused, council was never involved in this. Is that correct?

No, we don't we don't invol we the only employee we actually evaluate is you. Is that correct? Town attorney and Yeah. the auditor and the the people that we actually hire. Yes.

That's it's only three. Well, but but the question is how do we know that since we don't see the job descriptions, how do we know that these jobs as they are described which the job description determines the salary range and whatever how do we know that this model will meet the objectives and policies set by this council? I would say we'd have to hold the people that we hire accountable to make sure and it it flows downhill from there. And if we're not holding the people that we hire accountable, then they're not going to or may not be holding the people that they hire accountable. So, you have to you have to make sure that everybody's doing their job and it starts at the top. Any other questions?

We have 21 positions here. 21 pay grades. Oh, yes. 21 pay grades and about 50 job titles or positions. Give me the title. There's 21 paper grades in what? How many positions? I believe it's 49. Whatever. Thank you. Why does it stop at 21? I'm curious because how can the school district and ours goes up to 40 for example,

you know, without knowing how the school district's plan is put together, um the the number of pay grades is a decision that's, you know, made when the pay structures developed. So, uh our job evaluation system, we group jobs together by 50 evaluation points until we get to about the department head level and then it's 100 points. That's pretty typical that you'd have fewer pay grades up at the top. Um the Archer company that I work for in when they developed plans in the 80s and 90s, they did 25 point grades. And the impact is that I would have in those old days, we would have recommend twice as many grades. There's no right or wrong, sir. It's it's

and I may have misstated my question. Steps. Oh, steps. Steps. Okay. Steps. Do you know what their the width is between their steps at the school district? When you say width, yeah, like the distance like ours are about two and a half%. Something like that, maybe 3%.

Okay. Well, that's generous. Um, so you we looked at step one, the minimum, and compared it to the minimums being paid at the peers, and and it's going to be competitive. And then we looked at the top step 20 against the peers maximums. whatever they're, you know, whether they had 10 steps or 20 or no steps. And we know they're competitive. School dis I've done school district salary studies and school district market is is a bit different than local other forms of local government.

I just ask I guess because it's heartening when you're an employee to look and say, "Wow, if I stay here 40 years, I know what I'm going to do." I have an I have an airport client in North Carolina that has 55 steps. So, you know, these are decisions that that are that are made by employers. To me, um we're you're kind of at a you have to walk before you run. And it may be in five years or so, I'm just guessing you'll say, "Hey, maybe we should have a few more steps, you know." So, so living breathing documents. You're welcome. Now, your market uh reference points is basically step eight on the chart. Yes.

And I may have missed it. I apologize if I did. Did where is that derived from? Local, town, city, and county all average. Yes. And then that comes out. Yeah. Yeah. Those those peers are all averaged for each job. And and that private sector which pays more that's in the average, but it's not weighted heavily, you know. So, if for example, if we got uh 12 rates for police chief, uh that's not a good one because they don't exist in the private sector. What's a good one? Um an a mechanic.

Mechanic. Yeah. So, maybe we got, you know, 11 public sector organizations and then we have one data point from the local private sector. So, it's it's going to be one out of 12 data points, but it it's still in there. How did you decide on this peer group?

So it was um input from the project team and the department heads and it was primarily around you know where are you hiring people from and when people are leaving where are they leaving to? What organizations around here have jobs like you do? You know where we're going to find matches. Um, and then if there were any organizations that were really, and I can't I don't recall hearing if there were any. Sorry off hand, but if if there was an organization identified that was like trying to steal your employees, we would always include them. And that can happen.

Are the 49 job descriptions available to council? We can provide those. The Have we completed all of the descriptions from the outside. Yes. And we can and we can also provide the handwritten copies from the awards as well. All right. I would appreciate the ability to look at those. So these are all new job descriptions based on the questionnaires. I'm sorry. Does it match our peers? Oh, uh, how does that well

to match our account set up? you know, I I would not say that all those organizations are um good matches to you for every job. No. So what we did when we sent the survey out is we wrote a little summary, a paragraph summary of each of your jobs, what the main functions were and the requirements like any licenses, certifications, if there were degrees, how much experience, and then each of those communities or the state or whoever gave us uh matches if they had one. So sometimes we'd get a survey. It was typical we'd get a survey back from one of those organizations and they couldn't match all your jobs, but they matched a good good number of them. We had just a whole lot of data, which is a good thing.

Any other questions? Yes. Did you use MASC for any input to this? We use MASC data if um one of those organizations wouldn't complete the survey as a backup. Uh but we it's a good survey MASC but we wanted to we always try to get data right from each of the peers because we don't I think MASC is a good survey but I'm more confident with my our surveys because we rewrite them. Uh, but we did use MASC to fill in where there were data gaps in a few cases.

So, comparable to MASC, you think y'all are you're a better service than what they offer? Oh gosh, no. I I'm not I just don't know, you know, because I I I know that um many of our South Carolina cities and towns use MASC and I respect them very much, but I just know, you know, I know my own work, right? So, Yeah.

One last one and I'm guessing overly vocal. Uh you mentioned ongoing client relationship here. Is that something that council needs to consider or my understanding is this service what we've already paid for the next year? Y we can get some consultation. So it's a one year it's already part no further fees. All right. Yeah. Start and end date. When when did that year start? When we issued the final report, was it was it right? Okay. Yeah. Yep. September.

Yeah. September, October time. September.

Yep. So, if any jobs change or are created, you just send the questionnaires in and we'll give you a pay grade and we'll give you up-to-date uh you know what your peers are doing in terms of structure increases and um uh individual pay increases for a year. So we're looking at three4ers of a million dollars for full implementation and basically our total revenue increases at a rate of somewhere around 200,000 a year. Uh so council is going to have to dig deep for funds because we need or we need to make decisions as to what government we can afford. Anybody?

Good. Okay. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you very much. I appreciate you coming. My pleasure. We didn't bring snow this but you brought the cold. All right. The next item on our business is the overview of the department of town and Batesburg regional department head. Mr. Hendris, are you going to

start that off? All right. So, what we wanted to do tonight, uh, because we do have several new council members that uh we wanted to just kind of give a quick overview. The police department and the fire department gave their overview last month uh or two weeks ago. So, just wanted to give a quick overview of some of the the job duties that are in town hall. Also, uh on the general fund side with public works and the fleet department and then we've got uh the enterprise fund as well with wastewater and the utility maintenance. So, I'm just going to kind of give that quick run through on uh the town hall side of things. So, we do have one human resource employee that is Amanda Wyatt. She's our HR director. Uh so, she handles payroll for the entire town both weekly and bi-weekly. Uh she handles all onboarding of new employees. She's kind of our uh logistics supply person uh for town hall. Uh she creates and sends out invoices. We do invoice uh the school district. We do invoice third parties for uh like law enforcement uh details. Uh she handles our accounts receivable uh receiving income incoming checks for the town uh not for the department of public works. And then she also manages insurance and retirement benefits including monthly payments. She handles other little things that kind of come up as well. But that was her main overview that she uh kind of worked up. That's part of that uh job description that Cricket's going to be sending out. Um, taking a look at the planning department. Uh, we've got Becky with us. Becky has um been before y'all a couple of times uh in her role as zoning administrator and business license um director, whatever,

business license clerk. Um, in that under planning, you have Amanda Ethrrich who is our permit clerk and she also handles hax. And then Scott Perry is our code enforcement officer and Scott is also with us tonight. Um so with the zoning administration obviously uh we're enforcing the BNL uh ordinances in regards to property zone. We've had several conversations about that recently. Uh she aids citizens in their process of applying for uh and paying fees for inspections or inspecting plat um and then walking them through the whole process with uh regards to the planning commission. She handles the agenda for planning commission. Um she works with developers to bring forth you know and review sketch plans uh to determine compliance with zoning for subdivisions. Uh so she is that point of contact for the developers when going through the planning process. Um and so as she said you know she aids developers in getting sketch preliminary construction final plans for subdivision approval before planning commission. Uh she maintains those records for us. Uh then she also works with surrounding counties, department of uh environmental services and other state agencies to employ in to uh ensure compliance. Um she also handles business licensing. I think y'all understand that for the most part. Uh you know we had the uh business license ordinance updated in the fall. Um for whom the bell tolls there. So, um, so also she works with businesses to obtain new business licenses. Um, and on the permitting side, Amanda handles the issuing of building permits for any owner and authorized agents who intend to construct, enlarge, alter, repair, move, demolish, or change the occupancy of a building or structure or to erect, install, enlarge, alter, repair, remove, convert, or replace any electrical, gas, mechanical, or plumbing system in the

town of Batesburg, Louisville. I figured I better read that directly. Um, and she also ensures that all general contractors and mechanical contractors are licensed by LLR. Um, and then she also is the one responsible for scheduling appointments with um or inspections with Safe Built. Uh, Amanda also handles Hax, as y'all know, Hax is at 2% uh on prepared food and drink in town. So, she collects that 2% tax u from businesses. Um she can also uh send out Scott sometimes as a a collection agent in case they fall behind. So Scott will sometimes go make those um visits. Uh Scott, it's not on there, but Scott with code enforcement, his primary job is to enforce the property maintenance code through the international building code council. Again, I remind you he is not the building official. Building official is safe built. Uh, so Scott sometimes sees things and will, you know, pull in an inspector if necessary. Yes, sir.

Does he report to the police chief of the police department? No, he is not a he is not a police department employee. He's he is under planning and reports through town hall. He is a civilian who enforces onsite compliance with zoning when it comes to new construction. So offsets talking about the setbacks like we talked about two weeks ago. Uh yeah. So that is part of the review process in the in the office. Becky handles that on site and then on site that is part of the uh job of safe build. They're the ones that are on site and they they verify the setback. We have a a foundation that is set currently at less than 5t from the property line.

They should have they should have caught that in the in the inspection process. Yes, sir. Foundation should be coming up. But what are you going to do to help Well, I mean it it is a real situation. Well, we have the example. Okay. I'm not sure which example you're referring to, but we can talk about that later. But that is

that is part of the duty of Safeuilt. So, Safeuilt um while they're not a a specific employee of the town, they do handle all the building official duties. So, they will go out and do all of the inspections for uh compliance. And so that is an online system that is uh through Safeuilt. So if we get a request for that inspection, Amanda goes in, puts in the request and schedules it for the next day. Um and who notifies Blackman County Storm Water Control that they should be involved in a site. So that goes through Becky on the planning side. If if somebody comes in and brings plans, is that like in the in the actual building process

wants to uh to build a 25,000 foot warehouse in a already flooding zone. It's got to go through it's got to go through uh public works or paves half acre what's I don't know I can't find in our ordinances what the requirement is for paving uh parking lots for instance you know you see 20,000 square feet of parking lot if you're covering imperous surf or pvious surface you have to go through Lexon County and they will they handle all the storm water

square footage Uh there there may be a small portion you don't have to but you know if you're putting a sidewalk at your house that goes from your back is no that is that is u all that storm water stuff goes through yeah all it's all I have an engineer there that will review and then they'll send it back to us with either changes or approval is that the Lexman County lander Yes. So that would be that's part of it. Yes, sir. Um Jay, even though he's not included there, will we will council receive a a job description from Mr. Perry?

Yes. Yeah. This this doesn't have anything to do with those job descriptions that Maryanne was talking about. Uh this is just kind of giving you that overview of the different departments. Uh and this is not a a super deep deep dive, but this is just to kind of give y'all an idea. certainly with several new council members. Um, uh, public works, uh, David Padet is the public works director. Um, and and you've seen most of this information in your monthly council newsletter. Uh, so obviously they handle grass cutting in both business districts, uh, the parks, uh, Middle Tech campus, fire departments, uh, police department, fire and range, uh, any town owned property and a lot of those common areas. Uh they also are responsible for cleanup of rental buildings that are owned by the town. So uh from the depot to the cafeteria to Hannes uh they're responsible for that. They also do daily restroom cleanup at Leville College Park. Obviously one of the issues that's going to be coming soon is the new restrooms that will require more attention as we add a lot more uh toilets to our inventory. Uh they also handle trash receptacles around town. There are approximately 40 that they handle from uh both business districts, town hall. Uh they they handle a lot of those those tra if it's an outdoor trash receptacle, they're the ones handling it. Uh obviously their primary duties include limb and leaf pickup. Uh the limbs and leaves are taken to our landfill. We have a lemon leaf landfill, not a trash landfill, that's located on Range Road off North Lee Street. Um and so the limbs are mulched at that site. they they have to meet the dees standard for that. We do landfill management through dees and it's um it's inspected at least twice a year. Um they also deliver the trash and recycle carts. That's part of the waste management contract. We we get those delivered to uh the Liberty Street site and then on

Friday as we collect, you know, if it's a damaged cart or new carts that need to be delivered, uh they'll go deliver and pick up the old carts. um they occasionally will be called on to clean up some uh illegal dumping. Uh we don't pick up um simply, you know, we don't put don't put your couch on the side of the road. We don't pick up what are called white goods, but uh are times when we do have to go in and clean up some illegal dumping. So, it's kind of a fine line there. How long is the the mattress been on the side of the road? Um so, they also do barricade delivery uh and recovery around town. So whenever we have uh road closures, be it for event or for emergencies, they're usually the ones that are loading them up in the truck, hauling them to the site and then picking them up. Uh they clean ditches on town on roads, fill potholes, uh and do call outs for down trees. Also, uh we do have the part-time litter uh employee that is 10 hours a week that is under this department. So he goes and picks up trash on some of those hotspots around town. Um, and those are all listed each month in your um, newsletter that you receive. Uh, during the the Christmas season, they are the ones that are putting up the Christmas trees and other ground mounts as well as hanging pole lights. That is with the assistant of the fleet department. Uh, then they also do special events. They work the festivals. Uh, the big one obviously is Pure Festival, but all these other town events, they're usually there doing trash. Um, and then they also work the spring clean event. um staffing the recycle uh the old tire recycling uh and helping with some of the bigger projects and then going around and picking up the bags. Um fleet um Jeremy is here with us tonight, but Jeremy is our department head with 15 years of experience and 10 years as department head. Uh he has a staff of one in the shop. He has one mechanic. Um and their their shop is located at the Liberty Street site,

which is the the water plant site. Um with three bays and two lifts in that shop. Um currently service and repair 61 cars and trucks for the town. So some of those are the police department that is regularly being on the road and then some are not used nearly as much, but 61 cars and trucks and then 30 other pieces of equipment such as tractors, back hoes, generators, uh small engine stuff. So they've got nearly 91 engines that they're taking care of from different sides of things. U they handle uh light facility repairs. They street sweep once a month that spring to fall. Uh they assist with hanging of Christmas lights in the trees. They hang banners. Uh they update the sign on the the lead into town. Uh they also help all departments with vehicle and equipment procurement and upfitting of lights when needed. uh help out with town events as well and any other task asked by town manager and assistant manager. I like that touch. That was good. Um uh finance. Uh Lisa is our finance director and town clerk. And we also have another finance clerk on staff. Uh just a quick overview of them. They obviously handle accounts payable. They assist with budgeting, prepare monthly reports, work with auditors, uh handle debt management. They work with the banks on those. um work with the department of treasury primarily with the local government investment pool and they also handle our risk management and insurance on town insurance items with u municipal association uh the court uh Ken Phelps today was his first day so he's learning um but he is the clerk of court he has two part-time employees assisting and then we also have m the municipal judge Michael Emmer who was here earlier um I'm sure he's home with the newborn um and then he is assisted by his backup, which is magistrate judge Gary Morgan. And so the the local court handles traffic violations uh be criminal misdemeanors,

bond hearings. Uh if there's an arrest made, they will come in nighttime, early morning to do those bond hearings. Uh they collect fines and fees and can issue bench warrants as well. Uh I'm sure there's many others that I left out of that. Um, utility billing. Wanda put a lot of extra detail in there, but u utility billing. Wanda Hartley is our utility billing director. She works in town hall. She has two customer service reps, u James and Mia, that are up front. Uh, so they the billing department uh serves as that front line. They're the the first person you see when you come in town hall and typically um will be the first person that answers the phone when somebody calls. Uh so they're handling that customer uh walk up in the in the lobby. Um they handle the calls, they do daily financial operations, they're obviously taking payments. The biggest money we bring in is is the water bills that are being paid. So most of the money that comes through the front door is DPW money. There is some town money that comes in that way through permitting uh business licenses or u rentals, but most are going to be DPW funds. Um so their billing cycle and due dates, uh y'all are all water customers, so y'all are familiar with water bills that go out. Um so the meter reading that all happens under their watch. The meter readers and bill generation comes under them. So they will send those meter readers out. The meter readers for three weeks out of the month report to utility billing. Uh so they're going through their books doing the readings. Hopefully by the end of 2026 that will all be automated. Um but right now they are reporting to to Wanda and that should all be done by about the this time each month the mid20s so that they can work on the bill generation. And so uh they have the 25th is your

normal due date for your water bill. So the 25th if the bill is not paid then they generate that uh late payment or late bill. So it goes out that last week of the month. Then they're generating the new bill which goes out first of the month. Um so and then cut off day is the 15th. So obviously they're handling cutoff day, getting that list together and sending out the utility maintenance crew leader or crew to handle those cuto offs. Um so they also do account management and adjustments. There are time to time when adjustments need to be made. They work with the customer on that. Closing accounts, uh issuing refunds and adjustments and then reporting and debt recovery. Um after billing is complete, staff produces and uh required reports. We are also part of the uh state level um um I'm drawing a blank uh set off debt program. So uh Wanda as well as the clerk of court is certified to do set off debt. So if if somebody moves away and they leave a a balance a after the deposit is credited to the account, if they have a outstanding balance, we will go through set off debt through the state level to try to uh garnish wages or whatever to get those funds recovered. So uh Wanda is certified in that and deals with um set off debt twice a year. All right. And I'm going to pass it over actually I'm going to cover for Mike. I'm going to pull up his We got several different power points to pull from. Michael's a little more hightech

than I am with his graphic. So um but you know it is very important and certainly in this day and age we used to be able to get by with uh a contractor that would you know give us 10 hours a month but uh those days are long gone. Um so it supports every department. Uh technology enables daily operations and public services. Security and interoperability ensures systems work together safely. Reliability and availability are critical townwide. I'm not telling you anything you don't know. Um but uh got to hit the right button. Uh so Michael works closely with finance, HR administration and the business license systems, um payroll, billing, timekeeping, permitting, and records. Anything that's computer-driven, Michael's involved. Uh he also oversees all the workstations, printers, email, and document systems and vendor coordination and system upgrades. So, you know, if it's dealing with the police department, Michael's involved uh with their systems as well. Um and got ahead of myself. Public safety and essential services. So, works with police, fire, and dispatch connectivity, secure law enforcement systems and communications. He's on call response for critical system issues and network and system support for water and wastewater facilities. So, Michael may be called in to assist with after hours operations or, you know, emergencies on a variety of levels, including uh the SCADA system at the water department. So monitoring the uh water tanks um the pump at the new site. Uh a day in the life of the IT guy, multiple service requests across departments each day, planning, maintenance, and troubleshooting and

preventing issues before they impact operations. Uh we've had uh several um interceptions of uh scams recently with email. Um, Michael is not a typical 8 to5 employee. Um, he is a salary employee and so there are night times that he will come up and do upgrades to the system after hours so as it doesn't interfere interfere with operations. Uh, and he does that pretty regularly at the police department as well. Uh, so he he has a lot of flexibility in his schedule because he's working nights u, and working a a random schedule to say the least. Um, and why it matters. Technology touches every department. Downtime affects staff, residents, and emergency response. And it is an ongoing operational responsibility, not a single system. Um, if we don't have the internet working at town hall, town hall kind of grinds to a halt. We can handle some walk-in customers, but uh we're not able to post bills, we're not able to pull up account information. Uh, so Michael, keeping us um online and going is is critical. Um, and stop me if y'all have questions because now I want to turn it over to Andrew, the the winner. Um and in get you to the and you may just want to go ahead and call Angie up for her portion. However you want to do your song.

Um, so some of y'all haven't seen me talk a lot, and if you tied my hands and my feet together, I wouldn't be able to talk. I like to move move around and use hand movements and all that stuff. So, I'm not very good at standing in front of the microphone. But right here with me now, I've got Angie Atkins. She's our wastewater superintendent. She's been with the town 41 years. our longest serving person right now. Longest tenure employee. Yeah. Deserves a round of applause.

Angie and her crew are out of sight probably every day. Very seldom seen moving around town and sometimes out of mind. And the reason they're out of mind is because they handle their task extremely well. Angie and her staff can do everything they need to do with minimum assistance from me or Jay or anybody in town. Every time you turn on your sink in your house, whether it's just to turn it on to see if it's working or to wash your hands, no matter what it is, that water flows to the wastewater plant to be treated. every drop of it. She even gets some water that didn't come from the water pipes. She gets rainwater infiltration and inflow that unfortunately years ago oftent times was piped into the sewer system. Simple thing to do. It didn't matter years ago it went down the creek or wherever it might have went. Now it has to be treated just like water or waste water from your home. So we have definite rainwater inflow and infiltration as most other sewage systems do that's treated as well. She treats all of that. So on her slides here she's asked me to speak and you certainly jump in. She's she's the question answer. I'm just I'm just the the slide hitter. Um approximately 2,200 sewer taps uh residential and business sewer connections in town. Over 50 miles of gravity sewer lines in town. 50 miles of gravity sewer lines in town. Almost nine miles of force mains. What a force man is is sewer only flows naturally downhill. That's called a gravity flow sewer line. But sometimes we've got to

get it over the hill. To get it over the hill, we have to pump it. That's generally in a in a sealed pipe with minimum connections to it. But it's pumped from here over the hill. And once it gets over the hill, it might gravity flow to its next destination. But force mains, almost 9 miles of force mains that are pumped, 12 lift stations that pump into those force mans. So those 12 lift stations are just uh giant holes in the ground. Sewer flows into them. It's pumped out. As we've already discussed, the waste water includes residential waste water from your homes as we talked about, industrial, commercial, storm water, as I mentioned, and groundwater inflow. So, all types of of water coming down through the air and every drop of it is treated before it's released into the environment. Every drop that comes to her, released in a safe discharge. The the wastewater plant at present is permitted for 2 and a half million gallons a day. The treatment flows out into the small little Duncan Creek, makes its way on down throughout the community. Some technical uh aspects of how the treatment is done, but it's roughly an aation process. Equalization bases, they do kind of what you would think. They equalize out the flow. All different types of pumps. It's it's it's an elaborate system that you might not think of down there, but this is just kind of her some of her list that might not mean much to a whole lot of people, but it it's a lot of equipment that's moving constantly. And y'all know what happens when moving equipment. It wears out. So, she's watching over there. The equalization basins 3.9 million gallons each. And

the EQ's primary purpose as we use them now are to handle significant inflow increases. So, um, to simplify it down, if I may, if we get a large inflow, whether it be storm water or whatever, we Angie and her crew can direct direct that wastewater to the equalization basins as kind of a holding spot till we bring it back to the to the wastewater plant to treat it. So, that's that we refer to those as the EQ basins. So, she can store 3.9 million gallons each there untreated. um and then bring it back down into the process. She's got all types of checks and balances down there. She can tell you more about those if she'd like to, but everything she does and releases into the environment is is sampled, monitored, recorded regularly, routine. She's got four certified operators total staff. They have 12 pump stations as we just mentioned. What I want you to take note of, personnel are on site every day, seven days a week, including Christmas, including snow, including Hurricane Helen aftermath. Staff are on site every day. She has a skater monitoring system and it's a a really nice overview of the system. She can monitor what's actually running, what's not running, when it's running, how it's running, how fast it's running. Some things she can speed up, slow down, etc. We even have some monitoring equipment on some of our sewer lift stations, not all. We're heading toward correcting that, but she can do that. She has the ability to monitor that from a remote location.

If she has a cell phone signal, she can monitor it from her cell phone and and has some controllability there. But that system is constantly monitored and it has the ability to alarm and notify her in the event of something that malfunctioning. and we talked about uh got some plans to hopefully monitor all those lift stations. So, she's permitted and regulated by South Carolina Department of Environmental Services, formerly known as DHECK and the EPA, our lab down there. They do all their testing or or I think every testing you do inhouse. There are some things we ship off from time to time that we annual or something like that, but routine sampling is in is in house. Um, she has an industrial pre-treatment program and you all will hear us talk about that in the future where industry that is interested in coming to our town and even industry that is currently in our town have to meet certain protocol. That's

good word. uh before we allow them to release their waste water into our system. What did you call that again? Industrial pre-treatment pre-treatment program. Yes, ma'am. Thank you. That's just they have to do in some cases they have the industry will have to do some things might just be as simple as what letting it cool down but just is sight specific and that's their responsibility. Yes ma'am. She monitors it and she cracks the whip and she has control. I mean, she's got the authority to say, "Oh, no. That's not going to work today. Do better." That works.

Um, storm water permit compliance also. And then, you know, essential service of of protecting public health that everything that's released into the atmosph or or not atmosphere into the environment to the creek, monitored, safe, and documentation, DH dees, I'm sorry, checks back all that up. So, here's a kind of an overview. Um, this is as you are approaching down into the wastewater plant, the offices in the lab on the left. Um, some of the equipment over on the right, those circular channels you might see are some aation basins, but in the center kind of in the very back, that's where the wastewater enters the facility. We call that the headworks. Another picture she has, again, those are the aeration basins. So this picture is back at the headworks which was the middle of the first picture looking back at the lab and in the background on the left you can kind of see Commissioner Street as it heads back up toward 391 out there. Water uh waste water enters the plant flows around those rings um has a certain detention time in those rings and starts the process there. And the EQ basins that I mentioned where she can divert the flow are in the top left corner. As you can see that commissioner street kind of makes the bend up there out of sight. That's where those EQs are.

So Miss Angie, any questions? Yes. It's been a long time since when we first came down there. with the flywheels and all that. So, how's everything going down? Much better since we got new aeration and it had some upgrades.

What about that? One time we were pulling that sludge out of there. Do we have a cent or whatever? Yeah, we got a rotary press and we'd like to get a kind of graduate away from the centrifuge and maybe go to another rotary press because it takes less manpower uh to operate. You can start it up in the mornings, get all your stuff regulated, and just go over there and write down your sludge periodically and um it pretty much runs itself. So, it's a good

Can we come down when um maybe get with Jay? If you haven't been down there, um it's worth going down there and take a look at it. When when I first got on council, it was a bit of a mess. Even as far as getting the grass cut was a was a chore. So, you've done an excellent job. And I do invite uh council if we can schedule time Jay for them to come down and take a look at the uh waste water. I think it's worth a good trip. We maintained a pump 12 pump stations in the plant. So it's a good bit to do for four employees. So we they do an outstanding job. I have a good crew.

Thank you so much. Okay. Ma'am, if I may, who enforces our fog ordinance? Fat old grease. It's in the sewer use ordinance code of ordinances. Well, you have a I know it's a code of ordinance. Who enforces it? Who sees it? all of our facilities that generate

for isbre

we have a fat soil and grease we have a fat soil and grease ordinance that limits the requires pre-treat or um the collection We only we maintain the industrial users but our fog applies to Yeah. code of ordinance. I would commercial. Uh you you say you maintain the lift station. Do you on the lift station? Yes. Because I noticed that our expenditures for Fisher on call has dropped down significantly.

Fisher. What is it? Pishon called spicy. Spicy spicy spicy. Big difference. I got three four letters right in the name. Uh that has dropped off significantly. So our stations apparently are operating much better. So you do the maintenance on the lift stations. We're not sure who's doing fog. And you said you would like to uh can you do we have a 10-year plan for uh our sewer operation and capital requirements? What we're going to do for that with that plan over the next 10 years over the Well, that would be

Well, I mean, you know, we we're we if we're not looking 10 years out, uh you know, you can get hit with a $5 million expenditure uh not knowing it's coming up. Do we have such a plan? So Bob, what you're not going to do is harass Angie question. No question. I'll just tease you. I am interested.

We are working on a capital improvements plan. What I'm trying to do is separate water from wastewater and separate that from our utility maintenance. So lines in the ground, one thing, waste water, another thing, water which now is purchased. So that's kind of a separate thing. But as we know, we have some projects planned for the wastewater facility. We do not have a direct 10-year capital improvement plan for the wastewater facility, but for the system, the collection system. as part of the capital improvement plan that I hope to bring forward to you all soon.

But you do have contingencies in for you know just in case things go sideways, right? I do. Okay. And now um Council Mahal asked a question about the um grace. Now who who does that? Who checks that with the restaurants and fire and the food trucks and fire marshal? The fire marshal works. Thank you. Yeah.

Yep. All right. So, next I'm going to ask Archie Wash to come up. So, Archie is our utility crew leader and and when I refer to the utility, I'm talking about the water lines under the ground, the wastewater lines under the ground. Angie maintains it at the wastewater facility, but the pipes under the ground, out here on the street, wherever it might be, that falls back on the utility maintenance crew. Archie Wash is our crew leader. Um, Archie's been in the business uh 15, maybe 30, 20 years, 30,

maybe 30. Okay, we'll go with that. Um, unfortunately, we don't have lots of cool things to show you with maintaining water lines and sewer lines in the ground. and and Councilman Kaine does have and and what I want y'all to know is the pictures that I think Councilman Kaine are referring to were taken on a Friday night probably between 6 and 900 p.m. That thing was full of water

with Archie's crew out there. Um Archie's crew was out on Sunday afternoon

in the snow fixing a waterline leak in town. They're out and about. We went from Miss Angie being one of the groups that's probably the least visible in this town to Archie's group which is probably one of the more visible in town. I want you all to understand this crew doesn't take a backseat to anybody. They respond 247. And I've compared it to power line people back during the ice storm. Somebody said, "Man, I feel sorry for the power line people. You the the the power company employees. I don't want to disregard them at all. But when they're working, they ain't in the mud. They ain't in the wet,

cold, and the power's off. When these guys are working, they're kneede in mud, possibly something worse, wet, and sometimes we're dealing with water still coming in on us. These guys don't take a backseat to the power company. Anyway, his crew right here, just some typical pictures. On the left, one of our crew members, you see a water line running uh left to right on top there. We've got a saddle. This a normal normal way we would tap a water line. That's a saddle wraps around the water line. Um it I'm going to walk over. This is this is what I'm referring to here. We'll wrap the saddle around the water line. We can make a hole in there. This is a special cut off valve we have. And this will be the service line heading toward a customer.

The second the second pipe. I couldn't tell you. Is that what that's galvanized or galvanized? That's probably gas. That's gas line. We don't know until we got coal and we

But when a gas man comes up, we always tell him it's all right. We found both ends. Kind of our joke. But then the the the line running top to bottom as you asked about that's a sewer line. What I'm what I'm thinking I'm seeing here is we probably put in a new water in sewer service for a a homeowner or whatever it might be. Picture on the right. That's typical what we're going to find when we dig down and look out here. Probably old cast iron lines that were um anywhere from 70 to 100 years old probably. They just pop a lot of times when they uh have a drastic temperature change when the ground is warm and cooler water goes through them or something like that. And that's a that's a T uh there inside. Now, if you kind of look in the top of that right hand picture, you'll see a plastic T made out of blue plastic pipe and a newer T. What we're what the guys are in the process of doing there is cutting out that tea and and dropping a new tea in its place. If one section of that tee or one joint on that tee starts leaking, we have to take the whole a whole unit out. So that's that's what you're seeing there. Picture there again is new tee in place u hooked together how we would hook it together. And then on the right you got some sewer uh lines there. Another water line and some on unknown kind of in the background back there. Unknown line.

Is that big toilet pin? How you put that together with vict I'm not familiar with I'm not familiar with the term vict. Well, it's it's got a it's a groove light with a ring and then and then that man goes around it high. That's what we call high high max couplings, right? Yeah. The the dark blue are highax coup. They like those things a lot.

Yeah. Because it's only two bolts. We wrap that around and a bolt on each end. Pull it's it's just a a clamp that just simply does like this. One bolt pulls it together. Wraps it around. Those are probably uh gained tremendous popularity in the last six or eight years, 10 years.

Um and then on the right, um again, just a normal condition. You know, we're uh having to cut a road or do whatever we got to do to install a sewer and make a water tap. It's kind of common practice back in the day to put all that stuff under the road. Unfortunately for us, it's Not ideal nowadays, but that's just how it was done back in the day. Here's a picture on the left, a fire hydrant. That's typical what you're going to see when you see a fire hydrant be replaced. I don't know what the crew was doing here. I don't know if there was a leak on the line or whatever the whatever the issue was, but that's basically how a fire hydrant's hooked in. And back behind the fire hydrant generally has a pretty good block of of concrete poured or something like that, a thrust block. On the right, typical sewer connection. I know y'all aren't super interested in that, but the pipe sticking straight up out of the ground is what we refer to a lot as as the homeowner's cleanout. We can go kind of take a look in there up under the ground. You see, you see what we're looking at down there typically how it hooks in. And and the main sewer line in that photo on the right would be at the top or however you wanted to refer to that top or the right of the photo.

Thought there was another one. You thought wrong. I thought wrong, but Archie uh Archie's staff right now he's currently at five. Two of those are meter readers. Jay talked about the meter readers earlier. Meter readers are absent from our crew for the most part three weeks out of the month. If we have a barn burner, they will pull off a reading meters and come help the crew. And they do respond at night as well. But on a normal day, the first three weeks of the month, those two are reading meters. So his crew is reduced by two. right now he has five where we have two openings at present. So he's he's uh underst staffed as well as most most of us are and their crew like I said they they don't take a backseat to anybody and I proud of them. I stand behind them. Yes sir. So we we spend a lot of time the fire department and the police department section department but this department we need to make sure we staff up and we pay because um that night that I was out there it was cold as well.

It was colder than a polar bear's stomach. Wet stomach. Wet stomach. And those guys, young guys was in about four or 5 ft of water with waiters on and I was cold. And then they were running the the Bobcats. Um, two of them, something was English. And I don't know how they didn't cave in or whatever. They were working very hard um out there and people were calling me about their water being turned off. And you know, I had to just tell them, listen, these guys out here busting their hell to get this um to get you order, man. So, just be patient. So, um bring them a cup of coffee.

I'll bring, you know, coffee, some drinking, something keep them warm. But seriously, when we when we open this budget up, we we have to take care of water park, street department because these guys, you never know what you're going to find when you open up that ground um with all these old pipes down there. So, I applaud you. And there's a bunch of them around. Yeah. You do a great job. I know.

Thank Thank y'all for recognizing my job. Wonderful life of ductal iron pipe. Ductal iron, not to be confused with cast iron. Cast iron is what the industry standard was many years ago. That's what most of our system is. Ductal iron is a new advancement from that. Okay. Cast iron.

Cast iron, Mr. Bob, there's some in the ground 100 years old and it's still perfectly fine. In my opinion, the main downfall, two two inconveniences with ductal iron. One is it's a little more complicated to make a connection to because it's harder than plastic. We still have the equipment to do that. Second thing is it is subject to to cold weather cracks. You don't see the cold what I refer to as a cold weather break. You don't see those typically on plastic and you don't see them on ductal and that's one of the things that ductal is supposedly advanced. So the life of the cast iron I really don't have a good answer other than I'd say it it you know about like the old cast iron pot that you know we used 100 years ago they still work

system is coming up on 100 years old. Yes sir. Particularly in the basement district and most of it when did plastic come into being in the '7s. I think early 70s was a big push on plastic. The other one is equipment we used to use I haven't seen it recently metro on many occasions because we did not have an adequate backhoe or are we now in a comfortable position? I I I'm going to say we're still limited.

We're limited by the size of the equipment we have. our Mini X. I think it's a 35, which is one of the smaller. It's probably one of the smaller that you can get that you can't really tow behind a pickup truck, if that makes any sense. Uh it it's a fairly small unit. Its reach is minimum. What do you mean?

Well, well, there's there's there's different scenarios. I would think uh for a normal household residential tap in someone's yard, smaller is better, less destructive. Bigger implements certainly are are handier to to reach further. If any of y'all have ever dug a hole with a piece of equipment or backhoe, you know, it's aggravating to move around there and dig and move back around here. Length of reach weight. Our our mini eggs now will handle our plates that we put over the road, but that's that's touching it. Push. Step on up, Archie. You'd be better to answer some of these questions.

Not really. But I mean that that's that that would be something that you would put in a request for. Right. I'm excited about a lot of things I'm hopefully going to bring to you all in the near future. Is there any needs that y'all have in your department right now that you know we can use some good some more equipment or you'll make a list for us? Yeah. Go ahead. Yeah. I think that's what he's saying is 100 years old. This is not going to get any easier for you guys in the future. What do you need to do your job? You don't have to answer. I know you need man. If you get some other exactly right.

Well, I appreciate y'all recognizing that. Yeah. Just give us a listen. We got wish list. Yeah. What y'all do does not go unseen. I promise. I mean, y'all not better than Angie, but I'm just saying all we all we want you to do is recognize that we're getting closer than we were. I get close to closer than we were. Okay. Money want to move on. I was sensing that we were at that point. So, all right. Does anybody need a break real quick? I got Okay. I mean, and we do have barbecue sandwiches if y'all take a break.

I mean, I'm not sure how much time we really need. I think we've taken care of the big biggest items procurement. That's going to take a bit time if you want to go. I I would recommend the five minute break. Five minute break.

Get back in your seat. We'll get started again. Try to push this thing through. Night at all. Thanks. Be careful driving in a dark road. Mr. Hendricks. Mike, are you ready?

All right. So, uh, the next item we had, uh, Kathy had brought it up, uh, recently. It had been discussed for a while. I know Councilman Hall has, uh, expressed some interest in reviewing the procurement policy. Uh, to my knowledge, the 1996 date that you see on there is the most recent, uh, update of the procurement policy. Uh, so it's only been 30 years. So, the numbers that are are there are uh way out of date and and we are are probably in violation of of the policy. Um we're just going to kind of I know I need a mic. So, um my eyes aren't as good as they used to be. Um so, this is in the uh code of ordinances. So, you you can pull that up on the website. Uh but this is also um you you received that copy in the last week. So um just the basic stuff you know purchasing agent manager appoint purchasing agent we really don't have one each department head kind of does

that by the way says shall so term shall is not in question so or we have one appointed the very first line where it says code in code 1135-70 that's been 1135-53 320 now for uh 10 years. So this thing is very very question. Yeah, Mr. Mayor. Go ahead.

I I pulled some things from and this is their suggestion on a on an ordinance change. So, in I think I just kind of filled in where it said fill, you know, the town name and also the um and I put in some dollar amounts that may be useful for us, but things that can be changed. And then on the last page of this, it just has some option available. Yeah, Kathy has kind of taken lead on this um over the last few weeks. is so antiquated. We got to fix

and and she received that um model ordinance from Rob Wolf with the municipal association and then she updated the uh the numbers. Um but yeah, I I agree with Councilman Hall. This is uh out of date. It was out of date u probably under just about every um town manager we've had. So like you said that 5320 is right there first.

So one option could just be to adopt the model ordinance as presented by the municipal association. Um that would bring it up to the current um ordinances or current state laws. Um or we could go through and and edit and update the um current procurement uh policy. Um, you know, just for a quick overview on on the current policy, yeah, we've got numbers of 500 to a,000 and then a,000 uh to 10,000 uh for uh certain things. Um, yeah, we bring um the vast majority of the big items to council, but some that are already approved in the budget. uh be it chemicals that are uh water plant. We're not bringing those kind of things to council. Those are approved in the budget. But um I know that Kathy, do you want to just touch on on your numbers that uh you had shared?

Uh sure. And my suggestion is that this old one is so out of date and so antiquated, we probably just need to get rid and start a new. Uh Rob sent me this. It was a template based thing and I just kind of filled in the town's name where you left it insert town name here. Um he suggested from different municipalities he's worked with to go with that $5,000 range where you see B on the first page. That was his suggestion. I think they had it at 25 at one point in the template, but he said with the cost of things now 5,000 would be more. and we can change that accordingly as we think we need it.

And the town attorney reviewed that as well and he was in line with your thinking. So he did

does not address uh section 10 uh addressing 10.1-9 approval of authorizations by department heads or approval authorities by the town manager or town council. So, it doesn't address approval authority levels for normal purchases. Now, these were set uh 1996. That dollar is now worth $2.7. So, if it says $500, we should at least double it, if not add a 10% to make the ordinance viable for the next council. My suggestion is a formal work session where we integrate the two and and come up.

Yeah. But if people will study and let's unless come up with some type of because this is it is so antiquated. We are not bo we're not following ordinances here. Well, from my experience from running my business and the type of stuff that we buy since co price of some of this stuff is just well just for example pumps pumps of jet pumps that we used to sell for $500. We now sell for $2500 and that's just in a matter of five years.

Absolutely. So, and and the kind of that's for residential use. Whenever you start buying this size, $5,000 is is much more realistic than $500. Absolutely.

And it's and 10 times, you know, that's that may seem strange or too much, but no, that's that's the real world that we're going through right now. You go prices. I just got a notice today that two pump companies March 1st 5% across the board increase in price just across the board that means some pumps I mean jumping up 5%. And it the first two call it takes it. Somebody starts and then everybody jumps then it's the pumps get by then wire goes up then pipe goes up everybody goes. It's we just in that situation right now and and we have to be realistic whenever the town needs something. We can't wait to go through what it takes to get an ordinance or an ordinance change passed when we have an emergency that's got to be solved. So, we need to have some kind of provision to cover emergencies and give you more latitude and being able to make those decisions to cover us.

Okay. So, are we wanting to include this in a work session for next month to combine the two? And I think we need spend some time working on this and coming up with some realistic numbers for the world that we live in in today. Okay. Is the current is the current um ordinance online? Yes. Yeah. And there is a provision for emergency purchase in the existing ordinance. this one.

Yeah, it it's there are exceptions to the rule of requiring bids u or again but we're looking at approval. the approval authorities and bid amounts whether you bid or something are two different uh that need to be looked at per say but yeah we in the existing one there is provisions for emergency

there is because all you have to do is council we have an emergency uh that's it in the modern day world that's an email I spend $20,000 to pull the tanks out of a ground that we didn't know were there. Yeah. Another thing that um they suggested and this is this is what we have now and this is their suggestion. This one is almost too wordy. Attorneys like wordy things. Well, I was going to say the one we have now is a lot thicker than this one and it scares me that we're missing something. So, we do I guess need to

So, yeah, kind of go through it. But that was, you know, that was something they said, you know, to think about the wordy ones that we used to do years ago that there's reasons for just, you know, specific straight to the point. Well, modern day lawyers do not like where you on say tie things down too tightly. So, they like the little short leave it open or let's go to court with it type situations, which happens if you I was told the word give you more places to find things to go to court with. I think I guess it's on recording

with the scope of what we're talking about here that this is much too deep to do this tonight with everything we've already done. Okay. Uh I think we do need a work session where we concentrate on this and try and not anything else but this so that we can get something that we can all live with and something that that will be workable town. I don't want us to come up on the short end of the stick because we don't want to spend the time to get it get us where we need to be.

I I'm I'm with you on that. I think take the two find out if there's something here that we're that missing out of this one that we want to add back or if there's something in here we don't like, you know. Okay. But it is a definite we need to do it. All right. We'll have that work session soon. I know we're shooting for a work session on the safe streets grant next month, but we could do two. Steve's recommended doing two a month. So, um so we'll we can work on that. Um well, the next item we've got is is a Steve item. So, I want to I love the Steve item.

Steve items. Um, so Steve had reached out to me about a week ago about uh a proclamation for um next month and I asked would he be willing to kind of ex explain it and share more on it.

I sent everybody a a white paper on it and basically you know we we have parents in this community who have lost children. We have parents in this community who who have lost children and no matter how long ago it it's it's been um they still grieve and we just recently had a young man who's a veteran um take his life on Valentine's Day and so this day is u March 28th and it's a day for the entire community to come together and we'll have panels where people can talk about grief and uh mental health and anything else that they want. But just a recognition to people for people that, you know, we we understand that you're grieving and they may be able to um to um talk to a peer, another mother or father who has lost a child. And so that's all the the the day is about. And um we sent the same um uh request up to the governor's office and they it's it's under consideration with the governor's office. So it's an opportunity to have the town participating in it. That's all.

We open to everybody. Anybody that wants to come. We um uh Pastor Hicks at Wesley Chapel will uh be there. Um the the bishop um uh that Ry is placed over there, the bishop Heyman will be there. Any church is was welcome. Anybody and all folks are welcome to come and uh cuz people might need to talk to a pastor. They might, you know, they you never know, you know, people need to talk to to folks about how they're feeling. So

at the um at the park at the Hannes Auditorium in that that park. So hopefully we'll have um things for kids to do, age appropriate things. Um we can talk about even talking about family planning as far as uh final expense planning. People don't talk about it. End of life family

in the end in the life end of life. Okay. Not not that type of family planning, but end of life because people, believe it or not, it's taboo in the black community to talk about estate planning and stuff like that. Um and a lot of people pass away um without a will and that becomes a problem. You know, a lot of people have lost their uh family property because there was no will and no agreement on who was going to pay taxes and you know what happens when you don't pay taxes. So, um but anyway, if anybody had any other questions about it, you know, I would just appreciate

it's a good point. You know, I've been had the misfortune of going through this personally, and it's to lose a child is hardest thing a person can go through. And if you don't have support of friends and family and community, I don't see how you can make it. I know when we went through that situation, the outpouring of love for my family by this town is the reason I'm doing what I'm doing today because we could have made it. It was It's tough. And you you really never get over this. You just adapt and learn to live with it. So it it goes on forever. People say time heals all wounds. And uh it doesn't heal the wound. It makes you get to the point where you can live with the wound, but the wound never goes away.

I think it's a great thing. Thank anybody else have any questions about it?

Yeah, I do. And you said this would be at the park in Leville. Who would actually I mean what would be required of council and who would be heading this up? Yeah, the young lady that um brought it to me, she actually lost her daughter and two grandkids in the fire and she's been struggling and we met here a couple of times to um as a support group for her and other family. So, she's taking the lead. It doesn't it's not costing town anything. This is just a proclamation to acknowledge that day as um as a grief mental health awareness. In what times we

answer your question, the police chief has to issue a approval of a gathering on property according to our ordinances. You want to preach in the parking lot, you need police chief approval. Well, I'm glad you said that because we did get Josh's approval and um uh Dave, you got my email, right? That is correct. Is that Okay. Um, so we we'll start the the the time we start at 10:30 and hopefully we'll be uh done no later than six. You know, you know, sometimes when you give preachers and politicians microphones,

you know, let's hope that we don't make it political. Well, no. This this should be this should I'm shooting for this peer-to-peer mama to mama and daddy to dad, you know, children. Friend to friend. A friend to friend, you know, anything I can do. Yeah. Okay. Well, we we definitely appreciate it. We get your church involved. Have your preacher come and cuz we're going to do like a panel where people can talk about things. She had lost a job, she lost her husband. Yeah. I mean, people you see every day for 50 years, 30 years, and all of a sudden they're not there. you know, I'm I'm dealing with my dad and and my aunt I've lived with her for 10 years and then all of a sudden she's not there.

You know, sometimes it gets be a bit much

on the covers everything we have on our agenda and all your fans, we can't do anything else. So we don't vote in these meetings. So at this point in time, unless somebody objects, we journ. I'm get it